Welcome to MinusMouse!

MinusMouse can limit your mouse movement possibilities by means of only horizontal or vertical direction.
In addition, you can slow down the mouse speed to a minimum so you can better point to a very specific area
on the screen.

All these functions are toggled on and off by definable hotkey combinations and can also be combined
with each other.

Version history

Download

Supported Windows versions

Currently, MinusMouse has been successfully tested with the following operating systems:

Windows 7 64bit Professional

Windows 8.1 64bit Professional

Windows 10 64bit Home Premium

If you have made experience with any other Windows version, I´d be happy to receive a quick info about it!

Installation and usage

MinusMouse does not need any installation and can be run from a removable media (SD Card, USB Stick,
USB Harddisk, ...) as well as from your harddisk.
Just unzip the content to a folder anywhere on your system and start MinusMouse.exe by double-clicking it.
For more comfort, you can also place a link in your Windows Autostart folder to run MinusMouse along with
logging in.

After starting MinusMouse, you´ll find it sitting quietly in the tray, doing almost nothing.
Click the icon to open the menu and choose "Settings".
Here you can define the keyboard combinations to toggle the limitation of mouse movements separately.
Of course, the same hotkey combo cannot be used for different limitations.
If you feel bothered by the tooltip messages that pop up at the start of MinusMouse and every toggle of
a function, just select "Off" - otherwise select the duration of displaying them.
Your settings will immediately be saved in the configuration file.

That´s it! You are now ready to limit your mouse pointer moving only in horizontal or vertical direction!

Questions and Troubleshooting

?
How does MinusMouse work? Does it hack my mouse driver?
!
No, it doesn´t. MinusMouse only utilizes built-in Windows functionality and temporarily alters its settings.
The snail pace of the mouse pointer for example is achieved by simply turning the mouse speed setting
of Windows down to its minimum - you can do the same by entering Windows´ mouse settings dialog and set the
respective slider to the very left. The limited movement area is also a feature of Windows but it has no
user interface to manipulate it - therefore, you cannot set it yourself.

?
Huh? I cannot move my mouse anymore?
!
You might have toggled both horizontal AND vertical movement limitation at the same time.
All functions will add up until toggled off, so you can really nail your mouse pointer down on your screen.
Just press the hotkeys for both limitations again and restore your mouse to freedom!

?
Aaaaahhh! MinusMouse crashed and now my mouse is trapped on vertical movement in slow motion!
!
First: Don´t panic. Second: Don´t panic.
While MinusMouse tries its best not to crash, it might happen anyway. It will be quite annyoing if this
happens while MinusMouse has instructed Windows to slow down the mouse like a snail and then doesn´t have
the chance to revoke this, but you can (slowly) fix that by entering Windows´ mouse settings dialog and
put back pointer to warp speed.
But being limited to move only on a base line will hinder you massively with no option anywhere to reset that.
Solution:
Simple enough. Just start MinusMouse again. As one of its first actions, it will reset mouse speed to normal
and un-trap the pointer. But how to start it if you cannot use the mouse and double-click the file?
There are two ways: First, use only the keyboard to open Windows Explorer (hotkey: Windows-E), then navigate to
the file MinusMouse with the Tab-, Cursor- and Enter-keys.
Second, you can prepare yourself for such case by creating a link to the MinusMouse file on your
desktop and provide a hotkey combination in the settings of this link to start the program. Make sure
not to use this hotkey combo for any other purpose! A good combo might be Ctrl-Shift-F12 or so.
Now, if you are trapped, just press this combo to start MinusMouse and your issue will be gone like magic.
If all this doesn´t work: now it´s time for panic :-)

?
MinusMouse doesn´t work for me.
!
Maybe your Windows version is not supported, maybe there is another program interfering with MinusMouse.
Maybe you are using an outdated version of MinusMouse (use the "Check for updates" button in the "About"
window). I have no clue.
Please drop me an email with as much information as possible (Windows version number, 32/64bit, Home, Pro
or Server, other mouse software, ...)

Disclaimer - the boring stuff

By using MinusMouse you acknowledge the following terms of usage:

MinusMouse is intellectual property of the author, Dirk Schwarzmann.
You are allowed to use MinusMouse without charge on as many computers as you want and may spread it among
your friends and family, colleagues and anyone else as long as you keep it in whole.
MinusMouse may also be distributed on commercial compilations (like Internet download collections etc) but
only in its complete and unaltered form and only by referencing its original source
(which is www.dirk-schwarzmann.de).
You are in no case allowed to charge another person for this application.

Altering the program or one of its parts is prohibited!

You have the sole responsibility for using this program. The author cannot be held responsible for any
damage, loss of data or inaccessibility of your computer that might result from running the program.